The VIZIO VIA Phone gets an FCC teardown, but will the device ever hit store shelves?

PublishedNovember 14, 2011

VIZIO is probably best known for its cost-effective televisions, but at CES this year the company announced plans to release an Android tablet and phone. While VIZIO’s tablet has already been released, we’ve heard little about the company’s phone since it was first unveiled almost a year ago.

Well thanks to FCC filings, however, we now get a closer look at the VIZIO VIA Phone, including a few pictures of the device’s innards and user manual. External photos of the VIZIO Phone reveal a plain design punctuated with VIZIO’s “V” logo. The back of the device is sleek and appears to taper down towards the phone’s bottom, and two LED flashes surround the phone’s 5MP camera.

Internal photos of the VIZIO phone show Samsung SDRAM and Sandisk Flash Memory. A couple of Qualcomm chips are visible, and we suspect that the device relies on a Qualcomm SnapDragon processor.

Other features of the VIZIO Phone include a 4-inch 280×854 screen, 1GHz processor, VGA front-facing camera, and Android 2.2. FCC filings include the device’s user manual, but it appears that the manual mostly includes stock Android 2.2 information.

VIZIO hasn’t announced a release date or pricing for the VIZIO Phone, and we’re starting to wonder if the company still plans to release the device. While the VIZIO Phone’s feature set seemed decent at CES 2011, the device’s single core processor and use of Android 2.2 now seems quite outdated.